Beauty after 50

By Dr. Susan Van Dyke

September 7, 2011

I used to think 40 was old, now I know 50 is not, nor is 60 or 70. Who doesn’t know healthy, vital active men and women in their 80s and even 90s? When I passed my 55th birthday I realized that I was exiting the demographic that cosmetic company’s target. What? Am I no longer visible? At what second in time did my cosmetic desires become irrelevant to the marketers? I was insulted, incensed and not a little depressed.

But I don’t think age is only a number, I have proof. My practice is full of the over 50 crowd and our needs, wants desires may not be the same as they were in our 20s and 30s but we still care about how we look. It is now about making our outsides match our insides. I feel great and I want to look great for the stage that I am in in life.

I introduced CoolSculpting into the practice in March of this year. It literally can freeze fat and make it go away. CoolSculpting is great for treating stubborn areas of fat that does not respond to diet and exercise. As expected there was a huge interest from the public (because it actually works). Not expected was the large number of men and women over 70 who showed up wanting the treatment. Maybe the naked dancing days are over but they still wanted to look better in their clothes. And if fat reduction is not needed Thermage Body does a nice job of tightening up saggy, crepey skin on the arms, legs and tummy.

I find that what we all want is to feel good about what we see in the mirror. We have the ability to look great for our age. We call it skin rejuvenation. Consider laser skin resurfacing, remarkable improvement in sun damage and wrinkles can be achieved with CO2 laser treatments(Active FX, Deep FX and Total FX). Sure there is some downtime (about a week of redness and some swelling) but there is no better way to clear away the years with a single treatment.

I would be remiss if I did not include the fact that loss of volume is a huge factor in making us look “old”. We all suffer from shrinkage of facial fat, muscle and bone. Too bad the skin doesn’t shrink too. The solution? Add the volume back. SculptraAesthetic can do this. It involves several treatments of injections over several months to replace years of lost volume.

I used to think 40 was old, not so, there are so many things that we can do in our 50s 60s 70s and beyond. If you feel good, you can look good.

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